Powerless Sentence Examples

The walk calmed his irritation at being powerless for the first time since the Schism.

The things I wanted to do I was powerless to accomplish.

All she was doing was reminding him how powerless he was.

Were powerless to arrest.

His passion for intrigue is curiously illustrated by his letter to the tsarevich: Alexius at Vienna, assuring his "future sovereign" of his devotion, and representing his sojourn in England as a deliberate seclusion of a zealous but powerless well-wisher.

His enemies, headed by his elder brother Mikhail and the vicechancellor Vorontsov, powerless while his diplomacy was faultless, quickly took advantage of his mistakes.

Haunted by the recollection of that formidable conflict and lulled in the security of the Great Interregnum, which was to render Germany long powerless, the papacy thought merely of the support that France could give, and paid no heed to the dangers threatened by the extension of Charles of Anjou's monarchy in central and northern Italy.

THE] were practically powerless, the more so as their political activity consisted mainly in " building theories for an imaginary world."

It was plundered by Henry VIII., to whom the memory of Becket was specially obnoxious; but the reformers were powerless to expunge the name of the saint from the Roman calendar, on which it still remains.

Deraiya was razed to the ground and the principal towns of Nejd were compelled to admit Egyptian garrisons; but though the Arabs saw themselves powerless to stand before disciplined troops, the Egyptians, on the other hand, had to confess that without useless sacrifices they could not retain their hold on the interior.

We may regard it as a supplement or appendix to the Principe and the Discorsi, since Machiavelli held it for a fundamental axiom that states are powerless unless completely armed in permanence.

To protect the court and the national arsenal at Springfield, for which the Federal government was powerless to provide a guard, MajorGeneral William Shepard (1737-1817) ordered out the militia, called for volunteers, and supplied them with arms from the arsenal, and the court sat for three days.

From time to time bands of soldiery, whom the government was powerless to control, scoured the country, and rebellion succeeded rebellion till 1859, when the last fight against open rebels took place at Chichamba near Risod.

Instead of concentrating his force upon one bridge over the swampy and unfordable Dyle, Grouchy scattered it in attacks upon several; and when the emperor's despatch arrived, saying Billow was in sight, the marshal was powerless to move westward.

Stuyvesant conducted a successful expedition against the Swedes on the southern border of New Netherland in 1655; but he was powerless against the English.

The provincial councils had been swept away in 1876, and their functions divided between the central authority and small powerless local bodies.

On land the presence of a few educated Phanariots, such as Demetrios Ypsilanti or Alexander Mavrocordato, was powerless to inspire the rude hordes with any sense of order or of humanity in warfare; while every lull in the fighting, due to a temporary check to the Turks, was the signal for internecine conflicts due to the rivalry of leaders who, with rare exceptions, thought more of their personal power and profit than of the cause of Greece.

But nominalism was powerless to inspire theology with new life; on the contrary, its intervention only increased the inextricable tangle of the hairsplitting questions with which theology busied itself, and made their solution more and more impossible.

But the unfortunate prince had to choose between dependence and extermination, for his unaided resources were powerless against the persistent attacks of the unconquerable The Prussians.

The determination to limit still further the power of the executive was at the bottom of this fatal parsimony, with the inevitable consequence that, while the king and the senate were powerless, every great noble or lord-marcher was free to do what he chose in his own domains, so long as he flattered his "little brothers," the szlachta.

But there was one city of the East which, lying apart from the crowded highways of the world, had sunk to a mere provincial town, and yet possessed associations which the church of the 5th century felt herself powerless to eradicate.

Now powerless) darkness.

He perceived that Darwinism attributed too much to accident, and was also powerless to explain the origin of life and of consciousness.

Her first opponent she put out of action in twelve minutes, and, passing on, Hood immediately engaged other ships, the "Guerrier" being left powerless to fire a shot.

It was from the young Greenland colony that an attempt was made to establish a new outpost in Vinland, but plans for permanent settlement were given up on account of the hostility of the natives, with whom the settlers felt powerless to grapple.

When a "party of Resistance" came into office with Casimir-Perier in March 1831, the speech from the throne proclaimed that "France has desired that the monarchy should become national, it does not desire that it should be powerless"; and the migration of the royal family to the Tuileries symbolized the right of the king not only to reign but to rule.

Words are powerless to describe the desolation of that prison-house, or the joy of the soul that is delivered out of its captivity.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

His prestige as a minister, already injured by these two blows, suffered further during the autumn and winter from the cattledriving agitation in Ireland, which he at first feebly criticized and finally strongly denounced, but which his refusal to utilize the Crimes Act made him powerless to stop by the processes of the "ordinary law"; and the scandal arising out of the theft of the Dublin crown jewels in the autumn of 1907 was a further blot on the Irish administration.

In his case the ancestral hoards were under the control of his mother, the begum of Oudh, into whose hands they had been allowed to pass at the time when Hastings was powerless in council.

The opposing minority were now powerless, and the younger fellows who had been his pupils were more inclined to follow him than others would have been.

Through the almost impenetrable darkness and confusion we only discern this much, that Italy was powerless to constitute herself a nation.

At the same time the burghers of Graaff Reinet also rebelled against the Cape authorities, who were powerless to suppress the insurrectionary movement.

For the rest, a substratum of superstitious beliefs, which survives from the days when the Malays professed only their natural religion, is to be found firmly rooted in the minds of the people, and the influence of Mahommedanism, which regards such things with horror, has been powerless to eradicate this.

Changes of ministry at Constantinople were powerless to bring about an improvement, and early in 1896 Cretan affairs became so serious as to call for the intervention of the powers.

All that remained was to obtain the abdication of Benedict XIII., the successor of the Avignon pope Clement VII., but the combined efforts of the council and the emperor were powerless to overcome the obstinacy of the Aragonese pope.

But the severe measures adopted by the government against such " runaways " were powerless to prevent their immigration into Siberia.

Mercy was also in correspondence with the Constitutionals, and in letter after letter to him and the emperor, the queen, strongly supported by Fersen, insisted that the congress should be formed as soon as possible, her appeals increasing in urgency as she saw that Barnave's party would soon be powerless against the extremists.

Smouldering fires of his old energy flamed out once more and Napoleon began a rapid pursuit of the cavalry screen, which crumpled up and decamped as he advanced, yet all his efforts were powerless to entangle the Anglo-Dutch rearguard to such an extent that Wellington must turn back to its assistance.

Against the squares the horsemen were powerless, and failing to break a single square, they were finally swept off the plateau by fresh allied horsemen.

But the guerilla tactics of the wily klepht were powerless against Ibrahim, who marched northward, and, avoiding Nauplia for the present, seized Tripolitsa, and made this the base from which his columns marched to devastate the country far and wide.

Others protested against the anomalous and helpless position of the so-called king, who, if he 'could do no harm, was certainly powerless for good.

The most urgent national necessities were powerless to stir their hearts or open their purses.

The captive was, however, by no means powerless; by refusing canonical institution to the French bishops he involved the ecclesiastical system of Napoleon in inextricable confusion.

Lola Montez, created Countess Landsfeld, was supreme in the state; and the new minister, Prince Ludwig von Oettingen-Wallerstein (1791-1870), in spite of his efforts to enlist Liberal sympathy by appeals to pan-German patriotism, was powerless to form a stable government.

Today, there are modern-day Da Vincis living in parts of the world where just surviving is a full-time occupation, powerless to develop the gifts they could offer the wider world.

He later related how incredibly difficult it was to watch that happen and be powerless to intercede.

Yahweh would be powerless in the presence of Ashur (2 Kings xviii.

He was powerless against the mounting flood of desertion and demoralization in the army, and he was the first of the ministers to resign in despair.

He was all powerful on land, they on the sea; and for the present each was powerless to harm the other.

Narses declined to intervene, Padua was powerless to enforce its claims and Venice established a virtual independence of the mainland.

But the Tribuni Majores were equally powerless to allay the jealousies of the growing townships which formed the lagoon community.

Energetic and successful though the scattered trading settlements had been in establishing German trade connexions and in securing valuable trade privileges, the middle of the 14th century found them powerless to meet difficulties arising from internal dissension and still more from the political rivalries and trade jealousies of nascent nationalities.

When the French left wing and centre reached the Sambre bridges, at Marchienne and Charleroi, they found them held and strongly barricaded, and the cavalry were powerless to force the passage.

Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe is powerless before him....

In his place was his father-- Prince Andrew--and his father had neither shape nor form, but he existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless.

Its scope may be briefly indicated as including (a) duties exercised elsewhere by the Borough Councils, and by the London County Council (although that body is by no means powerless within the City boundaries); and (b) peculiar duties such as control of markets and police.

It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not, after all their experience of previous battles--when after one tenth of such efforts the enemy had fled--experienced a similar feeling of terror before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle.